I'm using trailblazers for WvW with my Mirage. Minstrel's is pretty expensive, made a suit for a scrapper healer before realizing I prefer roaming to following a zerg.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
I enjoyed Factions although I definitely agree a little too long was spent initially in the city before getting to go to the STONE FOREST and also meet GIANT CRAB PIRATES.
Winds of Change was ab fab though. Favourite bit of GW1 and especially the writing bar none.
I enjoyed Factions although I definitely agree a little too long was spent initially in the city before getting to go to the STONE FOREST and also meet GIANT CRAB PIRATES.
Winds of Change was ab fab though. Favourite bit of GW1 and especially the writing bar none.
Ooof, I'm still stuck on Cleansing Haiju Lagoon: Normal Mode for that nonsense. If anyone wants to give me a hand with it, that'd be rad.
Anyway last page I said in this essay I will and now you're gonna suffer through this, though I'm gonna do it as a bullet list instead.
Things that I thought were really cool about Factions:
Shing Jei island was beautiful, and had a really interesting spread of biomes. It was in some ways kinda like Pre-Searing in terms of beauty and chill-ness, but you could go back whenever you wanted (much as the shock of the Searing was super neat and something GW2 has tried to replicate with things like blowing up LA, but hasn't been able to stick the landing)
Even if Kaineng has serious problems in terms of navigability, for me it was still super cool at the time to see them trying to push the engine's limitations in terms of verticality, and to see a multiplayer game really try to capture the feel of an urban center. And there are actually parts of it that are exceptionally beautiful and not just "idk weird brown shantytown."
*** This is honestly the thing I'm looking forward to the most in a GW2 interpretation, because of how far ArenaNet specifically has come in terms of pushing vertical movement and navigation in maps. Already, Dragon's Stand showed that they'd learned A LOT about how to successfully make a hyper-vertical map since their first attempts in Heart of Thorns. Much of the annoyance of navigating Kaineng goes away when you have mounts and gliders. The city will also look less homogeneous given both 250 years of isolation and change (I imagine the Ministry of Purity has done a lot to change the upper levels from "chaotic Kowloon-esque shantytown" to "Nice and orderly and perhaps a bit terrifyingly sterile."
People have already talked about Echovald Forest and the Jade Sea but it's worth talking about again -- both biomes were stunningly beautiful, both had really interesting cool things going on. Furthermore, for me, it was super cool to see inspiration drawn from cultures that aren't normally touched on in... frankly any video game I can think of. The Kurzicks were inspired by a combo-wombo of northwestern China / southeastern Russia and Eastern Europe, with nods to Chinese ancestor worship and certain aspects of Chinese Scholar-Official culture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholar-official). The Luxons drew from a combo of Mongolian steppe culture, Mediterranean sailing culture, and some bits of Southeast Asian & Okinawan things and stuff.
*** On the one hand, as of GW2 the Jade Sea and Echovald Forest at least *began* to turn back into water and normal trees. However, it's clear that there's at least some jade that's still solid (big hunks of it in the Durmand Priory, for example). I think we may see big honkin boats instead of walker crabs, but with islands of carved jade. As for the Kurzicks, I think there were implications that the tree-cathedrals had already existed before Shiro's nonsense, they'd just been grown, not carved from stone, so I imagine they just... re-learned/went back to that style. Personally, I REALLY want the Sylvari to meet the Kurzicks so they can share notes on tree-architecture.
Fort Aspenwood still is an amazingly fun PVP mode, to the point that there's active matches every weekend! It's super fun and y'all should join in if you have GW1. Hell, I think GW1's still on sale, so go buy the complete collection, make a PVP-only toon, and get partying on Saturday and Sunday with us!
Kinda proud of myself today: just opened the weekly eye chest with all four hums/echos using 3 blue crystals I got from each of the dailies this week. Full boat chest. Not much of a reward overall, but felt really good, especially after killing whisper (which, holy crap, is way harder than the others).
Congrats to our Jumping Ninja Quetz for winning the trib race today, and to everyone who made it to the end... and everyone now has their red infusion!
Was jonesing for some GW2, which is a problem for me. I log in, stare at my beautiful characters, and then kind of don't know what to do.
Decided I was Going to Get the Warclaw mount!
My old WvW Ranger build doesn't work as well with the new patch, and I hadn't gotten used to it yet...so I started playing with a Core Necro build I saw in a few recent videos that looked fun. The guides say to use Trailblazer items, but I don't have any of those (and...don't remember how to farm gear in this game? I know bladed armor can be selectable but I forget how to do those events?)
Anyway, bought a bunch of Dire gear, Runes of Antitoxin, Sigils, and all the +expertise gems I could afford.
Jumped into WvW and...wow this doesn't work? At all? How did that streamer do it? My stats aren't THAT different are they?
Farmed in WvW for a few hours and ultimately finished unlocking the Warclaw...
Then when I was sorting through my inventory I realized I forgot to put the Sigils, Gems, and Runes into my gear. Not only did it jump my Condi damage up 175 points, I also clear twice as many condis from myself....
Also, I always run into the problem I've mentioned above. I don't...know what to do in-game? I love the aesthetics and combat system of GW2 more than anything, but when I log on I just kind of....sit there?
I kind of have it set up where my Chronomancer is gearing towards mostly running fractals, so I jump in and hit fractal dailies with him, my Thief I tend to go into sPVP with, and usually my Ranger and Necro I'll jump into WvW.
What I really want though, is some PVE Zerg stuff. Is that a thing? The Halloween event where you run around in a maze and do events with a group was REALLY fun and soothing for me, especially since I like to play PVE support.
Are there like, non-holiday events where it's just PVE zergs? Do I have to buy certain living world seasons to unlock them?
I guess I could also make a WvW support build and run in the Zerg as well.
What do y'all do when you play? What keeps you engaged?
Also, I always run into the problem I've mentioned above. I don't...know what to do in-game? I love the aesthetics and combat system of GW2 more than anything, but when I log on I just kind of....sit there?
I kind of have it set up where my Chronomancer is gearing towards mostly running fractals, so I jump in and hit fractal dailies with him, my Thief I tend to go into sPVP with, and usually my Ranger and Necro I'll jump into WvW.
What I really want though, is some PVE Zerg stuff. Is that a thing? The Halloween event where you run around in a maze and do events with a group was REALLY fun and soothing for me, especially since I like to play PVE support.
Are there like, non-holiday events where it's just PVE zergs? Do I have to buy certain living world seasons to unlock them?
I guess I could also make a WvW support build and run in the Zerg as well.
What do y'all do when you play? What keeps you engaged?
I don't play much outside event drops so I can't speak to that. However, YES, there are PVE zergs! There's two especially zerg-y ones that I can think of.
The most zergy of the PVE zerg gameplay in the base game can be found in The Silverwastes. In Squad LFG, you'll often see people saying RIBA; that's an acronym for RedIndigoBlueAmber, and refers to a rotation through the fortresses in Silverwastes. Basically, you zerg from fort to fort as events happen, murderizing things. Then you split into four groups to do some bossfights. Then you split into three groups to do a different set of zergy bossfights. Then you have a brief period where you zerg around the map digging up secret treasure, OR you can go into the PacMan Maze and quite literally play PacMan against ghost dogs, where the "pellets" are loot. The biggest advantage of Silverwastes is that it's not based on any specific time of day, eg, you don't need to show up exactly on the half hour or whatever, it just keeps on keeping on. In addition, because this is in the base game, it's active practically all the damn time. PLEASE listen to the commanders about how to do the bosses though; they're not hard but they have specific things you need to do.
If you have access to Living World Season 4, the Sunspear Uprising => Pawaladan, Jewel of Istan in the Domain of Istan event chain is what you want. Sunspear Uprising is a bit like Silverwastes in that it's not tied to a specific time of day beyond "not when Pawaladan is happening," but there is downtime, sometimes significant, between the actual zergs. You can get it to go faster by finishing events; see the linked wiki page for info. Pawaladan happens about every 2.5 hours, but the actual event is the *most* similar to the Halloween zerg, in that it's JUST RUN AROUND AND KILL AS MANY MANS AS POSSIBLE, plus, it actually IS useful to have group support builds as the mobs hit *very* hard. It's not as popular as it used to be thanks to nerfs, and it requires LS4, but it's still pretty hopping and a lot of fun.
If you want to pay to unlock the Living World episode for access to Istan, it's still only about $1.60, or 200 gems.
*edit* When I actively played and wanted a mindless zerg, both those places were my basic go-to zones. Istan got nerf'd so you can only get 42 chests total per day per account (12 from Sunspear Uprising, 30 from Pawaladan), while Silverwastes is a truly endless amount of loot, if that matters to you. It still means that Silverwastes is the more populated of the two.
Just playing through season 4 and working on the achievements in it is a fair amount of gameplay. I'm slowly working my way through them to eventually get vision and the skyscale.
I did like season 4, and the only big grind for currency for Vision that you don't get organically is in Istan, which is at least decent gold at the same time.
Hmmmm took a few days and burning all of my airship parts for bladed armor, but I finally have a Reaper build thay can function decently well in both PvE and PvP with just a swap of utility skills
Still not sure how I feel about my Core Necro Condi/Sustain Shroud
I've watched a ton of videos of this build and even been bodied by it in WvW, but it seems to fall flat when I try and employ it...
I also can't seem to get the core Necro Signets build to work in my hand either
Both of these are frustrating because I like core shroud more than reaper shroud because I'm a lunatic
The Reaper build I'm running is fun though. Lots of ranged boonrip, and some real high burst when people close in.
So I've been poking around a bit....is the easiest way to get non-core affixes on exotic armor still the Bladed Armor? Is there a new way I'm not aware of? I have a stupid part in my brain that wants to try out all the fun build ideas in WvW but I'm rate-limited by how easy it is to find certain affixes.
Or, related question- if I can't easily get some selectable non-core affix gear, what are some common "substitutes" for things? For instance, I've been running "Dire" gear for a build that suggests "Trailblazer" armor, and it seems to be working pretty well.
Are there others I'm missing? (looking at you, Marauder gear...)
If you're doing wvw a lot you'll get a piece of warlords each week. Doing the triumphant tracks to unlock buying the ascended from the skirmish vendor might be worth looking at too. The ascended are precursors for the legendary armor.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
I think - but it's been a long time since I've checked/played - that there are reward tracks for both WvW and PvP that give at least one piece of armour with selectable stats at the end of it. Glorious and maybe Hero's(?), respectively.
And I think they should have every stat available per expansion/LS you own?
If you're doing wvw a lot you'll get a piece of warlords each week. Doing the triumphant tracks to unlock buying the ascended from the skirmish vendor might be worth looking at too. The ascended are precursors for the legendary armor.
This is what I was looking for- apparently for each piece of triumphant armor you get from the track, you unlock the ability to re-buy it from a vendor (unelss I'm misreading something).
Time to get on that triumphant track!
(Also leveling crafting and farming mist shard armor is pretty "easy" for a lack of better description).
So it looks like...
Bladed Armor
WvW tracks (Triumphant)
Mist Shard armor crafting are the best ways to feed my addiction of weird builds, at least on the armor side
Saving the skirmish tickets for the ascended once they're unlocked is probably the better choice over buying more exotic. The ascended has stat selection as well, and doesn't cost that much more. Once you complete the reward track it unlocks the purchase of exotic and ascended for the item you chose. Having the full set of wvw infusions gives a ~20% damage boost to the npcs.
The skirmish tickets are capped at 365 per week if you complete the reward track through diamond.
That welcome back buff is nothing to sneeze at. I level a fresh guardian from scratch, and it only took about 10 complete zones to hit 80. Really nice little padding to the base rate.
I also forgot how much fun the zone completion crapshoot for a key is - come on.....come on key.....unidentified dye darnit!
New map is very pretty and a lot of fun. It plays like WvW if you were massively outnumbered by the dumbest player characters ever. They may be live tuning it, but the meta seems pretty hard to fail, and the components that make it up are largely easy as well (with some fun bits like Charrzookas!).
It's kinda hard for me to parse the reward value as I don't know much about gold/hour. It looks like they loaded a lot of high value mats into the achievement chests, so it may feel hella great for the first couple of weeks then die off as people cap out their commendations and open up all the goodies. Not sure on that, though.
Story was great but short. Lack of VO was surprisingly (to me) impactful.
So I don't have Living World Season 2+3 unlocked, but I have HoT, PoF, Season 4, and the entire No Quarter storyline.
I haven't ever even finished the main story quests....where should I jump in? Should I go through all the storylines I have unlocked before I move on?
Will I understand what's going on at all?
I also want to get into some Strikes and the new Meta Event. I know that No Quarter leads into the new meta, but what leads into the Strikes, story-wise?
Ok, wow, so when you get 5000 commendations for the legion of your choice, it unlocks an infinite version of that achievement with all the same rewards again. This is going to be a pretty generous map if people don't get bored I'm thinking. It's certainly way more manageable than Drakkar, easier than Dragonfall, and a little less in need of coordination than Dragon's Stand.
ANet definitely knew we'd be playing this all summer. Smart move pushing it out.
So I don't have Living World Season 2+3 unlocked, but I have HoT, PoF, Season 4, and the entire No Quarter storyline.
I haven't ever even finished the main story quests....where should I jump in? Should I go through all the storylines I have unlocked before I move on?
Will I understand what's going on at all?
I also want to get into some Strikes and the new Meta Event. I know that No Quarter leads into the new meta, but what leads into the Strikes, story-wise?
do you like big complicated open world map metas and/or jungle environments? OR do you like Very Difficult monsters where if you don't get their mechanics precisely, you die? OR is your main character a Sylvari? then Heart of Thorns
would you prefer a more chill pace of exploration with some optional big stuff but stuff you can ignore in favor of just bumming around, doing your thing? OR do you like more varied environments that include but is not limited to deserts? OR do you want mounts now (yes you do)? PoF
Play S4 after PoF, it's mostly pretty good.
PoF and HoT are pretty self contained and you can do them out of order; the main info in PoF that you missed between seasons is that killing dragons is releasing fucktons of toxic magic into the world, and the human god of war has stopped giving a fuck and decided that everyone is cowards so he's just gonna kill them all himself and not give a shit when this destroys the planet. Also in HoT you got an adorable dragon daughter; more about that is honestly explained in PoF than in previous seasons/episodes. she's adorable tho.
Basically both HoT and PoF assume that you might be a new player who just picked up the game with this expansion, so they at least try to make things make sense on their own. The LS seasons are really meant for people who are playing continually, hence why you should play PoF before LS4.
Icebrood Saga (current LS) is *way* more integrated into itself / dependent on its own story than any of the previous seasons, imho, so I would *strongly* recommend picking up the previous releases if you can. If nothing else, Grothmarr Valley is a really fun breath of fresh air with a neat carnival atmosphere and a HEAVY METAL CONCERT WOO.
New map is very pretty and a lot of fun. It plays like WvW if you were massively outnumbered by the dumbest player characters ever. They may be live tuning it, but the meta seems pretty hard to fail, and the components that make it up are largely easy as well (with some fun bits like Charrzookas!).
It's kinda hard for me to parse the reward value as I don't know much about gold/hour. It looks like they loaded a lot of high value mats into the achievement chests, so it may feel hella great for the first couple of weeks then die off as people cap out their commendations and open up all the goodies. Not sure on that, though.
Story was great but short. Lack of VO was surprisingly (to me) impactful.
Everyone doing this map should invest in the masteries and get the portable waystations.
They are usable anywhere in open world, and give you quick easy access to an item that does more CC bar damage than moa morph.
It will likely be nerfed in the long run, but for now this gives us a solution to all those people in open world that never bring CC to bosses.
Having played entirely too much Drizzlewood this weekend (knocked out all four 5k commendations cheevos and most of the others), I can say two things for sure:
1) This map is just crapping out mats. I don't know if Anet wants us to spend more time working on legendaries, they're trying to depress some mat costs, or they just want us to play the new map, but it's seriously just showering you with raw materials of almost any kind.
2) As a mirage, I haven't fallen off this many cliffs since fractals. Jeez, it seems like every champ or event has be having to mentally determine where Lingering Thoughts is going to spin me so I don't go flying into the ocean. I mean, if I have to look where I'm going I'm not much of a Whirling Dervish!
The gw2 community is insanely elitist and demanding for most content, regardless of whether it's necessary or not.
Yeah, if this wasn't one of my all-time favorite MMOs for setting, combat, and visuals, I would be out of here in a heartbeat. I've seen more toxicity in one hour of WvW than in my entire time playing LoL
Also, even trying to ask simple questions in Map chats in cities gets people making fun of you and giving you shit.
I've taking to fighting back and just insta-reporting any name I see that looks vaguely offensive. Petty? Sure, but it makes me feel better when Joo Gas Tank gets reported immediately after calling me an idiot for not stopping an enemy ranger from rezzing.
The gw2 community is insanely elitist and demanding for most content, regardless of whether it's necessary or not.
Yeah, if this wasn't one of my all-time favorite MMOs for setting, combat, and visuals, I would be out of here in a heartbeat. I've seen more toxicity in one hour of WvW than in my entire time playing LoL
Also, even trying to ask simple questions in Map chats in cities gets people making fun of you and giving you shit.
I've taking to fighting back and just insta-reporting any name I see that looks vaguely offensive. Petty? Sure, but it makes me feel better when Joo Gas Tank gets reported immediately after calling me an idiot for not stopping an enemy ranger from rezzing.
Rant time!
A lot of people playing this game are people who got sick of it and should've stopped playing years ago, but don't want to let go of it. They've long since forgotten what it feels like to be a new player, and in waiting for new content just assume everyone has done everything a billion times over. That lack of empathy over time has left me pretty bitter towards the hardcore community.
That said I blame ANet's handling of raiding as well. Vanilla GW2 did a better job with its appeal to hardcore players - you wanted challenging content, you jumped into WvW. That would've continued working had they not dropped the ball with WvW improvements and let the mode stagnate back then.
With HoT they made a push for challenging bigger group content, but it lacked an intermediary step - raids are a completely different game than what you'd do in dungeons or open world. That, combined with Fractal rewards finally being adjusted so that players were incentivized to complete the higher tiers, along with challenge motes with ridiculously good rewards on the newer Fractals - basically meant that all coordinated group content in the late game could be gated by the hardcore players. And we all called it out at one point or another. Don't get me wrong; its enjoyable content, I love doing it with my friends when they're up for it! But the increased consequences, rate of failure and length of time spent compared to standard group content meant it was only a matter of time before people would find ways to gate the fuck out of it so they'd never have to speak to another human being on their weekly road to 150 magnetite shards and 13 legendary insights they'll never need for another set of armor again.
One benefit of the stupidly easy dungeons of the original year is that it meant you could ignore the speedrunners if it wasn't your bag. You could do the dungeons just fine, even if it took a bit longer. Raids made that mentality your only way to succeed.
I think Strikes are a step in the right direction for addressing that, but they're either too easy or buggy to the point that the only reliable means of doing them is with cheese. Looking at you, Boneskinner and your stupid broken torch mechanics forcing everyone to bring 5 healers and face tank the boss since the aura will overpower the standard composition with regards to healing. And Whispers, which would be fine except the post 25% mechanic targets pet for some reason meaning you're effectively not allowed to enter melee for the last quarter of the fight. I think they still have the capacity to help balance things out, but they've gotta fix those mechanics and probably meet it with either a significant PvE buff to all classes or a drop in raid difficulty. And if the hardcore community screams easy mode they can fuck off to another game.
End rant.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Vanilla had Triple Trouble which had open TS organisation by large guilds that wanted to educate new players how to do the content.
Whereas raiding has people trying to get their content on farm status so they minimise the amount of time doing it each week because it's designed to be a long grind for legendary gear
It's absolutely a fault of A.net's design, and it should've been obvious to their designers that this would happen.
And now we have third party dps meters which, having been around for so long now, you actually see people using them in WvW to name and shame people "not doing adequate dps." That wasn't happening a couple of years back (even though WvW has been in a state for a while), and is just another illustration of how not guiding and shaping design with the intention of promoting healthy player interaction results in this.
It's a pity, because they had explicit social design decisions at launch to foster good player relations.
Class composition and experience requirements for at least a percentage of groups for all group content has been around since launch; Dungeons then Fractals had them long before raids showed up. There do tend to be chill groups for most content available though if you look, or start, them. I've had reasonable success with Fracs, Strikes and Raids in "chill" groups. (For raids, I'd highly recommend checking out Raid Academy.)
When I run Strikes, I'll ask something to prove someone can read/comprehend instructions rather than anything else, and usually 3 heal Whisper and the new Strike to make it slightly more forgiving - I think there are more of us out there.
On raids...
I believe I said before they launched I was terrified about what they would do to the game. (Though that may have been in officer chat).
Reality wasn't as bad, I've met a lot of chill and friendly raiders. It certainly is a distinct community, with a proportion of loud, rude and elitist players, but there are also communities dedicated to helping folks join them, as well as more casual regular raiding teams. (My first regular krewe took me blind into a number of bosses and explained it as we fought, my most recent krewe disbanded, but on our last raid we did bosses folks needed for key achievements to make sure everyone left with something fulfilled.)
But there's something a lot of people forget. Fractal CMs are exactly the same, if not worse, and there's another one of those on the pipeline.
While you'll get chill normal fractal groups, all CM groups require a certain level of experience. Mistlocked, a dedicated guild, seems to be the only place supporting getting new folks into CMs, and they can only take 10-15 people a week, Vs the hundreds the raid raining communities can. Normal mode in no way prepares you for CM on these fractals, and a group going fresh I to CMs will have a very rough time (I remember well!)
I guess it all comes down to people and what they want our of the game. Raiding and CM fractals are a very distinct experience from everything else PvE, just like PvP is so very different. Live and let live, and maybe go say Hi to the other side.
Looks like the last large-ish guild I was in has also dried up/died
Anybody in a cool, largish, active guild? Like I'm talking "More than 20 people tend to be active and you're likely to have people active every day when you get on." Love our little guild, not leaving, but just looking for something bigger.
@Lucid_Seraph Sent you a message, a guild I'm in is sometimes up there, but it can also fluctuate around content releases. I haven't been active for awhile though, so it could have gone either way since I last played. There may not have been 20 on though, so might still be smaller than you're looking for.
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Winds of Change was ab fab though. Favourite bit of GW1 and especially the writing bar none.
Ooof, I'm still stuck on Cleansing Haiju Lagoon: Normal Mode for that nonsense. If anyone wants to give me a hand with it, that'd be rad.
Anyway last page I said in this essay I will and now you're gonna suffer through this, though I'm gonna do it as a bullet list instead.
Things that I thought were really cool about Factions:
*** This is honestly the thing I'm looking forward to the most in a GW2 interpretation, because of how far ArenaNet specifically has come in terms of pushing vertical movement and navigation in maps. Already, Dragon's Stand showed that they'd learned A LOT about how to successfully make a hyper-vertical map since their first attempts in Heart of Thorns. Much of the annoyance of navigating Kaineng goes away when you have mounts and gliders. The city will also look less homogeneous given both 250 years of isolation and change (I imagine the Ministry of Purity has done a lot to change the upper levels from "chaotic Kowloon-esque shantytown" to "Nice and orderly and perhaps a bit terrifyingly sterile."
*** On the one hand, as of GW2 the Jade Sea and Echovald Forest at least *began* to turn back into water and normal trees. However, it's clear that there's at least some jade that's still solid (big hunks of it in the Durmand Priory, for example). I think we may see big honkin boats instead of walker crabs, but with islands of carved jade. As for the Kurzicks, I think there were implications that the tree-cathedrals had already existed before Shiro's nonsense, they'd just been grown, not carved from stone, so I imagine they just... re-learned/went back to that style. Personally, I REALLY want the Sylvari to meet the Kurzicks so they can share notes on tree-architecture.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
There's been a rollback on at least the EU servers. Accounts have been rolled back around 3 days.
From previous experience, it's safer to not log in til we have an announcement from ANET.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/ghl6i0/megathread_rollback_in_game_going_back_a_few_days/
Decided I was Going to Get the Warclaw mount!
My old WvW Ranger build doesn't work as well with the new patch, and I hadn't gotten used to it yet...so I started playing with a Core Necro build I saw in a few recent videos that looked fun. The guides say to use Trailblazer items, but I don't have any of those (and...don't remember how to farm gear in this game? I know bladed armor can be selectable but I forget how to do those events?)
Anyway, bought a bunch of Dire gear, Runes of Antitoxin, Sigils, and all the +expertise gems I could afford.
Jumped into WvW and...wow this doesn't work? At all? How did that streamer do it? My stats aren't THAT different are they?
Farmed in WvW for a few hours and ultimately finished unlocking the Warclaw...
Then when I was sorting through my inventory I realized I forgot to put the Sigils, Gems, and Runes into my gear. Not only did it jump my Condi damage up 175 points, I also clear twice as many condis from myself....
And now the build works...
Runes! They're important!
I kind of have it set up where my Chronomancer is gearing towards mostly running fractals, so I jump in and hit fractal dailies with him, my Thief I tend to go into sPVP with, and usually my Ranger and Necro I'll jump into WvW.
What I really want though, is some PVE Zerg stuff. Is that a thing? The Halloween event where you run around in a maze and do events with a group was REALLY fun and soothing for me, especially since I like to play PVE support.
Are there like, non-holiday events where it's just PVE zergs? Do I have to buy certain living world seasons to unlock them?
I guess I could also make a WvW support build and run in the Zerg as well.
What do y'all do when you play? What keeps you engaged?
I don't play much outside event drops so I can't speak to that. However, YES, there are PVE zergs! There's two especially zerg-y ones that I can think of.
The most zergy of the PVE zerg gameplay in the base game can be found in The Silverwastes. In Squad LFG, you'll often see people saying RIBA; that's an acronym for RedIndigoBlueAmber, and refers to a rotation through the fortresses in Silverwastes. Basically, you zerg from fort to fort as events happen, murderizing things. Then you split into four groups to do some bossfights. Then you split into three groups to do a different set of zergy bossfights. Then you have a brief period where you zerg around the map digging up secret treasure, OR you can go into the PacMan Maze and quite literally play PacMan against ghost dogs, where the "pellets" are loot. The biggest advantage of Silverwastes is that it's not based on any specific time of day, eg, you don't need to show up exactly on the half hour or whatever, it just keeps on keeping on. In addition, because this is in the base game, it's active practically all the damn time. PLEASE listen to the commanders about how to do the bosses though; they're not hard but they have specific things you need to do.
If you have access to Living World Season 4, the Sunspear Uprising => Pawaladan, Jewel of Istan in the Domain of Istan event chain is what you want. Sunspear Uprising is a bit like Silverwastes in that it's not tied to a specific time of day beyond "not when Pawaladan is happening," but there is downtime, sometimes significant, between the actual zergs. You can get it to go faster by finishing events; see the linked wiki page for info. Pawaladan happens about every 2.5 hours, but the actual event is the *most* similar to the Halloween zerg, in that it's JUST RUN AROUND AND KILL AS MANY MANS AS POSSIBLE, plus, it actually IS useful to have group support builds as the mobs hit *very* hard. It's not as popular as it used to be thanks to nerfs, and it requires LS4, but it's still pretty hopping and a lot of fun.
If you want to pay to unlock the Living World episode for access to Istan, it's still only about $1.60, or 200 gems.
*edit* When I actively played and wanted a mindless zerg, both those places were my basic go-to zones. Istan got nerf'd so you can only get 42 chests total per day per account (12 from Sunspear Uprising, 30 from Pawaladan), while Silverwastes is a truly endless amount of loot, if that matters to you. It still means that Silverwastes is the more populated of the two.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Still not sure how I feel about my Core Necro Condi/Sustain Shroud
I've watched a ton of videos of this build and even been bodied by it in WvW, but it seems to fall flat when I try and employ it...
I also can't seem to get the core Necro Signets build to work in my hand either
Both of these are frustrating because I like core shroud more than reaper shroud because I'm a lunatic
The Reaper build I'm running is fun though. Lots of ranged boonrip, and some real high burst when people close in.
Or, related question- if I can't easily get some selectable non-core affix gear, what are some common "substitutes" for things? For instance, I've been running "Dire" gear for a build that suggests "Trailblazer" armor, and it seems to be working pretty well.
Are there others I'm missing? (looking at you, Marauder gear...)
And I think they should have every stat available per expansion/LS you own?
This is what I was looking for- apparently for each piece of triumphant armor you get from the track, you unlock the ability to re-buy it from a vendor (unelss I'm misreading something).
Time to get on that triumphant track!
(Also leveling crafting and farming mist shard armor is pretty "easy" for a lack of better description).
So it looks like...
Bladed Armor
WvW tracks (Triumphant)
Mist Shard armor crafting are the best ways to feed my addiction of weird builds, at least on the armor side
Saving the skirmish tickets for the ascended once they're unlocked is probably the better choice over buying more exotic. The ascended has stat selection as well, and doesn't cost that much more. Once you complete the reward track it unlocks the purchase of exotic and ascended for the item you chose. Having the full set of wvw infusions gives a ~20% damage boost to the npcs.
The skirmish tickets are capped at 365 per week if you complete the reward track through diamond.
I also forgot how much fun the zone completion crapshoot for a key is - come on.....come on key.....unidentified dye darnit!
It's kinda hard for me to parse the reward value as I don't know much about gold/hour. It looks like they loaded a lot of high value mats into the achievement chests, so it may feel hella great for the first couple of weeks then die off as people cap out their commendations and open up all the goodies. Not sure on that, though.
Story was great but short. Lack of VO was surprisingly (to me) impactful.
On an unrelated note, found this hidden on youtube, one of the first GW2 filks I've found in years, it's good!
I haven't ever even finished the main story quests....where should I jump in? Should I go through all the storylines I have unlocked before I move on?
Will I understand what's going on at all?
I also want to get into some Strikes and the new Meta Event. I know that No Quarter leads into the new meta, but what leads into the Strikes, story-wise?
ANet definitely knew we'd be playing this all summer. Smart move pushing it out.
do you like big complicated open world map metas and/or jungle environments? OR do you like Very Difficult monsters where if you don't get their mechanics precisely, you die? OR is your main character a Sylvari? then Heart of Thorns
would you prefer a more chill pace of exploration with some optional big stuff but stuff you can ignore in favor of just bumming around, doing your thing? OR do you like more varied environments that include but is not limited to deserts? OR do you want mounts now (yes you do)? PoF
Play S4 after PoF, it's mostly pretty good.
PoF and HoT are pretty self contained and you can do them out of order; the main info in PoF that you missed between seasons is that killing dragons is releasing fucktons of toxic magic into the world, and the human god of war has stopped giving a fuck and decided that everyone is cowards so he's just gonna kill them all himself and not give a shit when this destroys the planet. Also in HoT you got an adorable dragon daughter; more about that is honestly explained in PoF than in previous seasons/episodes. she's adorable tho.
Basically both HoT and PoF assume that you might be a new player who just picked up the game with this expansion, so they at least try to make things make sense on their own. The LS seasons are really meant for people who are playing continually, hence why you should play PoF before LS4.
Icebrood Saga (current LS) is *way* more integrated into itself / dependent on its own story than any of the previous seasons, imho, so I would *strongly* recommend picking up the previous releases if you can. If nothing else, Grothmarr Valley is a really fun breath of fresh air with a neat carnival atmosphere and a HEAVY METAL CONCERT WOO.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Everyone doing this map should invest in the masteries and get the portable waystations.
They are usable anywhere in open world, and give you quick easy access to an item that does more CC bar damage than moa morph.
It will likely be nerfed in the long run, but for now this gives us a solution to all those people in open world that never bring CC to bosses.
1) This map is just crapping out mats. I don't know if Anet wants us to spend more time working on legendaries, they're trying to depress some mat costs, or they just want us to play the new map, but it's seriously just showering you with raw materials of almost any kind.
2) As a mirage, I haven't fallen off this many cliffs since fractals. Jeez, it seems like every champ or event has be having to mentally determine where Lingering Thoughts is going to spin me so I don't go flying into the ocean. I mean, if I have to look where I'm going I'm not much of a Whirling Dervish!
people are always fuckfaces in the high level content of this game
Me: "Hi, I'd like to learn this piece of --"
Them: 500 PROOFS OF WHATEVER OR WE KICK
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Yeah, if this wasn't one of my all-time favorite MMOs for setting, combat, and visuals, I would be out of here in a heartbeat. I've seen more toxicity in one hour of WvW than in my entire time playing LoL
Also, even trying to ask simple questions in Map chats in cities gets people making fun of you and giving you shit.
I've taking to fighting back and just insta-reporting any name I see that looks vaguely offensive. Petty? Sure, but it makes me feel better when Joo Gas Tank gets reported immediately after calling me an idiot for not stopping an enemy ranger from rezzing.
Rant time!
A lot of people playing this game are people who got sick of it and should've stopped playing years ago, but don't want to let go of it. They've long since forgotten what it feels like to be a new player, and in waiting for new content just assume everyone has done everything a billion times over. That lack of empathy over time has left me pretty bitter towards the hardcore community.
That said I blame ANet's handling of raiding as well. Vanilla GW2 did a better job with its appeal to hardcore players - you wanted challenging content, you jumped into WvW. That would've continued working had they not dropped the ball with WvW improvements and let the mode stagnate back then.
With HoT they made a push for challenging bigger group content, but it lacked an intermediary step - raids are a completely different game than what you'd do in dungeons or open world. That, combined with Fractal rewards finally being adjusted so that players were incentivized to complete the higher tiers, along with challenge motes with ridiculously good rewards on the newer Fractals - basically meant that all coordinated group content in the late game could be gated by the hardcore players. And we all called it out at one point or another. Don't get me wrong; its enjoyable content, I love doing it with my friends when they're up for it! But the increased consequences, rate of failure and length of time spent compared to standard group content meant it was only a matter of time before people would find ways to gate the fuck out of it so they'd never have to speak to another human being on their weekly road to 150 magnetite shards and 13 legendary insights they'll never need for another set of armor again.
One benefit of the stupidly easy dungeons of the original year is that it meant you could ignore the speedrunners if it wasn't your bag. You could do the dungeons just fine, even if it took a bit longer. Raids made that mentality your only way to succeed.
I think Strikes are a step in the right direction for addressing that, but they're either too easy or buggy to the point that the only reliable means of doing them is with cheese. Looking at you, Boneskinner and your stupid broken torch mechanics forcing everyone to bring 5 healers and face tank the boss since the aura will overpower the standard composition with regards to healing. And Whispers, which would be fine except the post 25% mechanic targets pet for some reason meaning you're effectively not allowed to enter melee for the last quarter of the fight. I think they still have the capacity to help balance things out, but they've gotta fix those mechanics and probably meet it with either a significant PvE buff to all classes or a drop in raid difficulty. And if the hardcore community screams easy mode they can fuck off to another game.
End rant.
Whereas raiding has people trying to get their content on farm status so they minimise the amount of time doing it each week because it's designed to be a long grind for legendary gear
It's absolutely a fault of A.net's design, and it should've been obvious to their designers that this would happen.
And now we have third party dps meters which, having been around for so long now, you actually see people using them in WvW to name and shame people "not doing adequate dps." That wasn't happening a couple of years back (even though WvW has been in a state for a while), and is just another illustration of how not guiding and shaping design with the intention of promoting healthy player interaction results in this.
It's a pity, because they had explicit social design decisions at launch to foster good player relations.
When I run Strikes, I'll ask something to prove someone can read/comprehend instructions rather than anything else, and usually 3 heal Whisper and the new Strike to make it slightly more forgiving - I think there are more of us out there.
My previous thoughts on this (back in Feb!)
Anybody in a cool, largish, active guild? Like I'm talking "More than 20 people tend to be active and you're likely to have people active every day when you get on." Love our little guild, not leaving, but just looking for something bigger.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/